End Game
by Generic Gen
Summary: *offscreen* She suddenly grinned wide. "In one month, I'll have beaten your game." The twins' world is breached in a way they had not expected, by a person they had not expected.


This is a scene from a fic I started a loonnng time ago but never finished. Thought I'd upload it anyway. Meant to be Kaoru/OC. OC is Nakako Takahashi, a new student in the twins/Haruhi's class. I guess you can consider this to be post-tv series. One-shot. Usually Ouran boy/OC fics tend to be tiresome, but maybe this one won't be?

_Scenario_: Nakako Takahashi, who has become a friend of Kaoru's (not so much of Hikaru's) swears to the twins that she will learn to tell them apart in one month, with the promise that if she succeeds, she'll be given one day to do whatever she wants with them, dubbed by her as "Hikaru and Kaoru Reformation Day". After many attempts (some failed, some successful) to notice the difference between the two (off-screen, basically I don't want to put them together from my document), this is how the month ended.

**/**

**...**

The first time she beat them, he knew it was a mistake.

She sat in front of them, squashed between two girls who were absorbed in their performance, the tan hands on her lap folded loosely into fists, a chunk of her flowing black hair clasped between her left index finger and thumb. Her head was pulled forward in concentration and her eyes critical as Hikaru brushed a lock of hair out of Kaoru's eyes. She was trying to analyze them, he knew, to find slight nuances and degrees of difference between the two of them; _Is Kaoru's smile not as wide?_or _Does Hikaru have more hair in his bangs?_, but he knew that she would not find anything, that she had been searching for two and a half weeks now and that they already knew that her search was futile.

Then they decided to play their game, and they stood in front of the girls with their identical green caps on their heads and their identical grins on their faces, and Hikaru was on the right and Kaoru was on the left, and before the other girls even made a guess at which was which, she lifted her hand and pointed at Hikaru.

"Are you Hikaru?" she asked, and simultaneously they shouted, without missing a beat, "Wrong!"

Her hand faltered and she dropped it into her lap, looking disappointed. "Daijobu," said the girl on her right, patting her shoulder. "No one ever gets it right."

"Really?" she asked, looking mildly surprised. "Someone must have gotten it at _least_ once—"

"No," replied the girl on her left, shaking her head amiably, "unless, of course, the twins were lying. Well," she added, pressing her finger to her chin thoughtfully, "there was also Haruhi-kun."

Nakako looked again at him and his brother, and they both grinned amusedly at her, but they didn't trust themselves to speak. She sighed and closed her eyes. "Gomen."

That was how they knew it had been a mistake.

**...**

The second time she beat them, they had not been playing the game, and Hikaru had almost given them away.

They had been facing the window in their homeroom before their first class, watching for Haruhi, and from behind them she suddenly put a light hand on one of their shoulders and asked, "Kaoru-san?"

They mussed up their hair with their right hands and turned around at the same time. "Well, did I get it right?" she asked, her eyes expectant. "The way you stand is different. Hikaru-san's posture is more confident."

They leaned back and folded their arms behind their heads. "Dunno," they chorused in sing-song voices.

"At least answer me," she snapped, jabbing her finger accusingly at Kaoru's chest. He deigned to coolly raise an eyebrow at her. "How'm I supposed to get it right if I can't see your hairstyles and you talk at the same time?"

"Why should we help you?" they asked mockingly, and as they said it, Haruhi walked in. Hikaru took a step forward by accident and froze.

Nakako slightly, but only slightly, cocked her eyebrow.

_Still not enough_, thought Kaoru.

**...**

The third time she beat them, he knew it was his fault.

It was January 20th, Ouran Cosplay Day, and their class representative had brought a tragic _jidaigeki_film to watch during their Fine Arts and Japanese classes. All of the students had crowded up in the front of the classroom, some on the floor, others in desks that had been unceremoniously squashed together before the movie began (the Ouran cinema had been double-booked that day and class 2-A took precedence…obviously Tamaki's fault in some way). He and Hikaru had sat in the very front on the floor. They were dressed up as twin James Bond-esque spies from a _shounen_ manga. Haruhi, who sat in a desk behind them, had opted not to dress up at all.

Kaoru gave an audible sniff and wiped away a tear that had trickled out of his left eye as the main character in the movie, Yusuke, discovered, with effusive and wonderfully tragic music in the background, that he had slain his own son in the confusion of battle. "Kaoru-san?" asked a voice from behind him. He whipped around.

"Nakako-san?" he mouthed without speaking. He had not noticed her next to him or when she had arrived. He furtively glanced upward at his hair. It was pressed down flat by his 1950's western hat.

"It's so sad, isn't it?" she wailed to him in a whisper, rubbing her eyes. One of her purple eyelash extensions ripped away from her eyelid.

He nodded and smiled at her tremulously as she fumbled to reattach it. He turned back around, sniffing quietly this time.

_It's because I gave myself away_, Kaoru assured himself. _Hikaru is less likely than me to cry because of a movie._

Next to him, Hikaru was staring a little too intently at the movie screen, dry-eyed but looking troubled.

**...**

The fourth time she beat them, they had been wearing different clothes and so it wasn't fair.

It had been snowing outside and she had caught them in school before they had a chance to take off their new set of winter gear, which they had chosen from a collection their mother had completed the night before.

"Kaoru-san!" she shouted, running up to the two of them. She froze in front of the pair of them. Their mufflers were wrapped around their chins and their winter hats squashing down their hair so that neither's were distinctive. She stood back and scratched her chin, looking them up and down. "Kaoru," she repeated, stepping back up to him and grinning excitedly. His breathing paused: at this distance, the gold in her chocolate eyes was striking. "I heard your fiction story won second in the regional competition. Good job!"

"Th-thanks," he replied, nodding and pulling down his muffler as he spoke.

"Can I read it?" she asked enthusiastically, pulling off her gloves.

"Sure," replied Kaoru, smiling despite himself. She had done it again.

"Cool," she replied, waving at Hikaru as he pulled off his hat. Hikaru grinned weakly in response.

"I like your clothes, by the way," she said to them. "But I think Hikaru's sense of fashion is more suited towards mine."

They stayed outside the coatroom until she had already left. Hikaru whispered to him, "Five days left."

Kaoru nodded. "That didn't count, right?"

Hikaru didn't answer at first. After a few seconds, he nodded slowly.

**...**

The fifth and final time she had beat them, it was the 1st of February, and the challenge was up. This time there were no excuses.

It was after school and they were at the Host Club. She sat in front of them, again in between two girls, but this time she was quite calm and unbothered and didn't seem pressured at all, chatting serenely with her neighbors.

_She knows she's won, that's why_, thought Kaoru, as they snapped on their green caps and swiveled from right to left to confuse their guests.

"Well then, can you tell which one is Hikaru?"

"Still no," sighed a girl, pouting unhappily.

"I know!" said Nakako, standing up and pointing at Hikaru. She grinned. "This is Hikaru-san."

"Wrong!" they said, wagging their index fingers at her.

"Don't lie," she said, annoyed, flaring her left nostril. "I can tell that this one is Kaoru," she said, pointing at him. "Your eyes are sof...uh, they're different."

"Well then," they replied, placing their hands on their hips, "would you like to play again to prove you're wrong?"

The girls on the couch gasped. "Will you, Nakako-san?" asked a girl on the right.

"Please do!" cried the other.

"What?" asked Nakako, seeming discomfited. "Okay, fine." She sat back down on the couch and folded her hands across her chest.

They did it again. She lifted her arm and pointed to the twin on the right. "This one is Kaoru-san," she said. "And this one is Hikaru-san," she pointed at him.

"It's the same as last time," said a girl.

"Yeah, it is," she replied. She raised an eyebrow at them.

"You're wrong," they said stubbornly. "Two more times."

"What? No way! Why not just one more?"

"Our game, our rules!"

And two more times they did it, and two more times she beat them. "It's over," she said, standing up and pointing at Hikaru, who was back on the left after having switched the third time. "I've won."

The girls around them, which had increased in number to ten, held their breath.

Kaoru and Hikaru looked at each other. They turned to Nakako, who had a knowing gleam in her eyes.

"Yes," began Hikaru. "You're right," completed Kaoru.

An explosion of gasps and shocked screams suddenly filled the room. The girls around them squealed and swooned as Hikaru and Kaoru shook Nakako's two hands at the same time, swinging her arms like seesaws, their grins back on. Several girls glomped Nakako in congratulations.

Kaoru and Hikaru's grins remained throughout the frenzy that ensued; girls squee-ing and asking them in dramatic, hushed voices what they thought, Renge commentating animatedly on her High-Power Motor of doom, and the rest of the men in the Host Club joining in (well, at least Tamaki and Honey, anyway).

The twins' smiles disappeared, however, as soon as the commotion turned away from them and back to Nakako.

They should have been happy that it was possible to tell them apart. That had been what they'd been asking for, after all. But somehow, Kaoru couldn't manage it. Perhaps he was too shocked to feel anything else.

Perhaps it was because he knew that this was the end of an era.

He watched Nakako as she continued to be swarmed by other girls. She seemed preoccupied, but she suddenly looked up at him. He blinked and looked as though he'd been caught. Then, in a kind and not deprecating manner at all, she smiled.

**/**

A/N: As a note, I know that the twins let their hosts get the guessing game right on occasion, just to entertain them. Didn't feel like changing it, so there you go. Nakako slipping the 'san' for Kaoru on occasion is purposeful.


End file.
